Law and Order Criminal Intent: Episode
by Anulis
Summary: A case with disturbing evidence brings Detectives Goren and Eames together with SVU Detectives Munch and Stabler, and a young girl becomes their sole advantage in their fight against crime.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters of Law and Order CI…yet…furthermore, I mention Goren's size constantly in my fics, it's not an insult, I have never dated a small man. So stop telling me that…and I don't have anything going on between him and Alex either…so nix on that too…

Chapter One

To the average person walking down the streets of New York City, the sounds would have been impossible to block out: the screeching brakes of taxis and buses, slight amounts of steam erupting from the manholes in the sidewalks, the sizzling of thick franks on a sidewalk hot dog vender. Two natives stopped at this vender for lunch, and it was these that were so able to disregard all of the thunderous noises about them, and at the same time be completely aware of every word of every person that passed them.

"She wasn't even listening to me!"

"And I told you to pick it up at twelve…"

"Completely unacceptable…"

"Oh honey, it's beautiful!"

"Happy anniversary sweetheart…" Detective Bobby Goren smiled at this tidbit then shoved into his mouth the whole of his relish-drenched hot dog.

"How do you eat that stuff? Do you know what that does to your intestines?" Eames asked, looking disgustedly at a chunk of relish dripping off the edge of his chin.

"Iff wan na meb Eemths." Goren replied. Eames just laughed at his attempt to speak and took a tiny bite out of her naked hot dog. It was almost three o'clock on a Monday afternoon in August, and the air was turning cold for winter. The two detectives from the Major Case Squad of New York's finest had just escorted a witness to a trial that had finally put away a dangerous serial killer. The Detective swallowed half of his mouthful and tried to speak again.

"I said because I'm hung-" _Cough. Hack._ Goren had just been slammed into by something and inhaled a piece of frank. When he had regained his breath, he looked down to the object that had knocked the wind out of him to see a girl who could not have been more than sixteen sprawled on the ground before him. Goren was a six-foot tall veritable rock, and therefore not much fun to run in to.

"I'm sorry, are you okay?" Goren asked, reaching a hand down to help the terribly thin beauty up. But she recoiled, startling him. "It's okay, I'm a police officer, are you okay?" he repeated. The girl didn't speak, but turned her head wildly behind her. She rolled over and flew to her feet, and taking a last look at Goren, ran full-speed around him and left into an alley.

"What was that all about?" Eames asked, looking up at Goren, who remained silent. He looked at the alley and back to where the girl had looked, and back and forth again, making something of a scene. He finally settled on the place across the street where the girl had flashed a glance and narrowed his eyes.

"Not what: who…" He said, walking across the street toward the opposite corner.

"Who?" Eames asked, once again losing Goren's erratic train of thought.

"You don't walk into people unless you're looking behind you, and you don't run into people unless you're running from something behind you." They reached the spot across the street and Goren twisted his head this way and that, looking incredibly concentrated; but there was nothing beyond the constant mob of lunch-goers, completely unknowing of a terrified young girl who had happened upon someone who cared.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"Bobby?" Eames asked tentatively. But Bobby Goren was preoccupied. His cheek was resting on his arm, on a pile of paperwork, on his desk back at the NYPD precinct. Goren was trying, with little success, to piece together the face of the deathly-pale young girl who had run into him the day before. Eames searched his face for a moment and then waved her hand in front of it.

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, what?" he said blinkingly coming out of his daze.

"Where are you today? Is this about-" as she was speaking, both her's and Detective Goren's pagers went off at the same time.

"Double homicide on 16th." Goren read, "I'll drive." He said with a smile, picking up his usual demeanor. Though Eames wasn't quite convinced, she decided to lay off for a while.

"This is it." Eames said. She and Goren walked up a white-stone staircase and into the uptown flat's grand double doors.

"Morning Detectives," Detective Munch said. Behind him, Detective Elliot Stabler walked up with a box of latex gloves, handing a pair each to Goren and Eames.

"Sex crimes? What are you guys doing here? We got a double homicide ticket." Eames said, snapping on her gloves. Stabler and Munch glanced at each other.

"One of the Vics was female, the other one is her teenage son; the woman was raped." Stabler said.

"How do you know it's her son?" Eames asked. Stabler handed her a picture, torn on one side, with a young woman and her son; the resemblance was uncanny.

"They found that in her back pocket. It looks like we're working this one together." Munch added, shrugging his eyebrows.

"Great!" Goren said happily. "Where are they?"

"Down here Detectives!" a crime scene investigator yelled from a door behind the double stairwell.

"It looks like a secret staircase." Goren said, wiping a finger down the edge of a piece of wall that had been folded out.

"It was plastered and painted over when we found it. Took three guys to dislodge it." The CSI said.

"How cliché…" Munch said.

"How did you know where to look for it?" Eames and Stabler said at the same time. They eyeballed each other for a moment and looked away. Goren couldn't help but laugh aloud at this.

"We got an anonymous 9-1-1 call from a payphone down the block, my people are already working on it. Dr. Warner says they've been dead for all of about a day, which puts time of death at about 2:00 yesterday. The call was put in yesterday at 3:10 pm, cops got here three hours later and it took my people since then to open up the wall."

"Three hours?" Munch exclaimed. "What, did they blow out a tire?"

"No, it was a Judge's birthday yesterday and every single Judge with the authority to sign the search warrant was at the party, in no state to sign anything if you know what I mean. So they had to find this nobody judge from kiddie-court to sign it-"

"About the 9-1-1 caller…" Eames said, getting back to business.

"Right, the operator said it was a kid. And she says that the voice was definitely female."

"Hmm. This is a nice area for a double homicide, and especially for a rotting hidden staircase." Goren said, sniffing the walls again. Stabler, who had never been acquainted with Goren's peculiar style of investigating, gave him an odd look. The CSI kid ignored them both and spoke.

"You haven't seen anything yet, it's right through here." The group had walked down the short staircase and was now stumbling through thin hallways and passages that made up the poured-cement basement. The CSI used a thick cloth to push open a metal door and plugged his nose.

"Wohow!" Stabler coughed, the scene that met them was nothing but horrific, especially considering that almost the entire floor was covered with spatters of dried blood. Long chains with manacles hung from all four walls of the large room; one of these walls had two people, the homicide victims, hanging from it. They were facing the walls, with their arms chained above them. Both were hanging, but their bare feet and almost their knees were on the floor, showing that they were once standing.

"What the hell…." Stabler said, narrowing his eyes at the chains in the room. Goren was playing with one of the empty manacles, which was covered in dried blood. Stabler joined him at trying to remove samples. Eames and Munch had gone straight to the bodies, both of which were badly damaged.

"What's the prognosis Dr.? Cancer? Brain tumor? Should we make a living will?" Munch joked as Dr. Warner came around from behind the body of the teenage boy.

"They would have had the time. If I'm right about the cause of death, it took these two at least an hour to die. " She replied. Warner grabbed the two blankets that had been wrapped around the shoulders of the victims and pulled them off, handing them to one of her assistants.

"Ouch, is this what killed them?" Eames asked, staring blankly at the shoulders of the victims; the other two detectives also flocked toward them. They had only seen similar wounds in the movies, but they knew exactly what had caused them.

"A bull whip, like any common one found on a ranch, or a plantation…" She added gravely. "I think they were beaten to death, but I won't know until I do a full autopsy."

"What does that mean biologically Dr.? They didn't just die from the pain did they?" Eames asked. Goren was walking away, staring at the floor.

"No; biologically they probably bled to death, but the pain would have knocked them out after a while."

"This gives a new definition to the word heinous." Munch said, stepping back slightly.

"They watched…" Goren said from somewhere behind them.

"What do you mean?" Stabler asked, drawing closer to him. Goren motioned them all over to the side of the room closest to the door.

"The empty spaces between the blood, they're footprints." He pointed to them on the ground, "Maybe twelve, fifteen people, they were standing here watching and the blood fell on their bare feet."

"So someone watched as these people were murdered, like a TV show, it was for entertainment." Stabler said, disgusted. Goren shook his head.

"No, they were made to watch, forced. Look at the prints, none of these people moved an inch; they were terrified."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"A torture chamber?" Captain Cragen asked. The SVU captain had been given the case, and with that came Detectives Goren and Eames to manage.

"The lab reports came back half an hour ago. Warner says they were definitely beaten to death." The Captain fell back in his chair and began to rub his neck as he always did when he was stressed.

"Great, the media's gonna have a field-day with this one. Okay, I want one major case detective with each of mine so Elliot, you're with Detective Goren, and Munch is with Detective Eames. Elliot, I'm sending you guys after the 9-1-1 caller, Munch, you're canvassing the neighborhood to see if anyone saw or heard anything." The newly made teams nodded and headed out the door.

Sometime later, Goren and Stabler pulled over near the payphone where the call had been made. It was surrounded by yellow tape and had two uniforms on guard duty. Not bothering to duck under the tape and investigate the phone, which had likely been used again and again by the people following the caller, rendering it useless, they looked around for bloody footprints.

"There's nothing here, I don't think the caller was in the room when it happened." Stabler said, stretching his back, it had begun to ache from bending over to see the clean sidewalk.

"Maybe not…" Goren added.

"Sirs, here's the electronic printout of the phone call." Goren took the folder and walked over to read aloud.

"It starts off with a lot of inaudible noises, the operator asks 'who's there', 'this is 9-1-1 emergency'…'what's your emergency' 'hello?'…Here.

"They're dead."

'Who's dead ma'am, where are you?'

She shushed her, whispered, "Listen, I can't talk long, he'll know I've left, two people are dead… they, they were innocent-it was my fault, I never should have tried to… but they're on 16th street, in the big white house, number-" She gasped and the operator heard a crash, she probably dropped the phone, she says something inaudible, and then starts whispering…the computer loses it from there." Goren finished gravely.

"Damn it." Stabler added. The crime scene investigator shook his head and turned the page.

"The operator made this notation later. "After I heard the crashing sound, the girl was whispering so low I could barely hear her, that's when she told me that the bodies were under the stairs, then I heard slapping footsteps, like someone running barefoot on-" Goren was gone before he had gotten to the word 'cement'.

"Goren!" Stabler yelled, running after him. But Goren was long gone in a world of his own, wondering why he hadn't seen it before. It had been only a single street away, barely two minutes after the 9-1-1 call that a barefoot teenage girl had crashed into him, and now he thought he knew why -- the cement would tell the story.

"Goren! Where are we going?" He didn't answer. "Talk to me!" He said, grabbing his new partner by the shoulder.

"I was eating lunch on 15th street yesterday at 3pm." He said simply, rocking back and forth on his heels as he waited impatiently for the light to turn red. When it did, it was all Elliot could do to keep up.

"Okay…and what does that have to do with anything?" Stabler asked hesitantly, quite sure his partner had gone mad.

"Everything! I almost inhaled my hot dog when a teenage girl ran into me."

"The 9-1-1 caller?" Stabler said, catching the train of thought

"I think she _was_ in…" Goren stopped short; he had found something not quite what he was looking for. Three imprints, long slender stripes of dried blood decorated the ground where the girl had fallen after hitting Goren's chest the day before, not the footprints of blood he had expected. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. Elliot was already paging the crime scene unit to block off the area around the prints.

"I was wrong." Goren said through his hand.

"About what?" Stabler asked, even though he already knew.

"The caller was in that room, but she wasn't one of the observers, she was being observed."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"You were right." Dr. Warner said later that day. "The blood found on the sidewalk matches blood samples taken from the floor and the third set of chains. There were also fragments of blue polyester and cotton in the blood, she was wearing a shirt over her wounds but, it looks like the caller was beaten too."

"Then why isn't she dead? How was she able to escape from thick chains, in a room that had a metal door and ten to fifteen people in it and still manage to run two streets away?" Stabler asked. Goren had barely spoken since his flight to find the three imprints on the sidewalk.

"I don't think they meant to kill her." Warner suggested. "Whoever did this definitely meant to kill the mother and son, but she couldn't have run at all if they meant to kill her. I think they let her out of that room on purpose."

"Hey Bobby, how are you doing?" Eames asked. She and Munch had come back to the precinct after three hours of door-to-door interrogation. Goren had his arms folded on his desk, balancing his chin on his hands with a thousand-yard stare at his computer screen that usually accompanied the traumatic life of a cop. He lifted his thumb, clicking the mouse again and again as pictures of young missing girls panned across the screen.

"I can't find her." He sighed at last, leaning far back in his chair and rubbing his eyes.

"600 teenage girls go missing every year Bobby, and that's only the ones someone bothers to report missing." She reasoned.

"I know. I just…I know she's here." He said through his hand. Eames gave him a sympathetic look.

"Well, good luck then. Me and Munch are going to check out that alley where she ran after bumping into you."

"Right. How's that going by the way, you and Detective Munch?" Goren said with a mischievous smile. "He is available…"

"Oh right!" Eames laughed. "Nope, you're the only man in my life Bobby." She said, patting him on the shoulder. They both laughed and Eames left with Munch while Goren continued to click through the seemingly endless file of pictures.

"Warner doesn't think they tried to kill the girl you saw. She thinks they let her go on purpose. What are you up to?" Stabler said as he plopped into a chair beside him.

"Looking through pictures of missing teenage girls. I know she's in here." Stabler raised his eyebrows.

"You know you're doing that the hard way right?" Goren twirled around in his chair and raised _his_ eyebrows. "Yeah, come on, I've got someone you should meet."

"Who's that?" Goren asked, grabbing his coat.

"A computer whiz that works for SVU, he can track down the picture for you if you can get a sketch artist to draw something up digitally."

"There's no need." Captain Cragen had just walked out of his office, pulling his suspenders back onto his shoulders.

"What's up Captain?" Stabler asked.

"We just got a call from the National Jewish Children's hospital. They picked up a teenage girl this morning with severe lesions on her back. I just paged Eames and Munch-they're already there." He turned to look at Goren. "She says she won't speak to anyone but you."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Hey," Munch greeted them in the lobby of the E.R. and walked them up a flight of stairs "The Doc's almost done patching her up. 147 stitches." He shuddered at the thought.

"Where'd they find her?" Stabler asked.

"An ambulance on a false 9-1-1 saw her bleeding through the back of her t-shirt and picked her up." Eames said, handing Munch a coffee and taking a gulp of her own. "Coffee?"

"No thanks." Stabler said, eyeballing the hospital 'food'. Goren shook his head and walked over to the nurse's station.

"Excuse me nurse? Detective Goren, NYPD, where-"

"You here for the girl with the cuts all on her back?" Goren nodded. "Exam four, that way." She pointed to a corner room with both curtains drawn, shielding its insides from view. "Her name's Shelley."

"Thanks…" He headed for the door and knocked, and waited, knocked again, waited some more. "Hello?" Goren said, opening the door. It was clear that someone had just had stitches done, but the room was empty.

"What is it?" Stabler asked as Goren flew past him.

"Cover the exits!" He yelled as he slammed through the door to the stairs. He leaped down the stairwell and hung onto the handrail to swing him through the door into the E. R.

"Did you see a girl walk by here?" He asked the security guard by the stairwell door, flashing his badge.

"Yeah, just a second ago with her father…" He pointed toward the large, white double doors that led out of the hospital. Goren shoved two doctors out of the way, crashed through the doors and around the side of an ambulance before he saw them.

"Police! Stay where you are!" Goren yelled, drawing his gun. Next to him, Elliot was pulling his 9mm.

"Step away from the girl!" Stabler yelled, poising himself to shoot. The two might as well have kept quite for all the good their words did, for seconds later, they had to dive behind the ambulance as they were fired upon by the man. Goren leaned out slightly to fire back, but the man was using the girl as a shield, tightening one of her arms behind her back. When he saw Goren's face from behind the ambulance, he turned the gun on the girl, pressing it into her head.

"Throw your weapons out here or I will kill her!" He said with a thick Russian accent. Two guns came sliding out on the asphalt.

"Just let her go sir! It doesn't have to end like this, let her go and you can just walk away, all we want is the girl! Just walk away!" Elliot yelled from behind the bus. Goren reached up and slammed a fist into the side mirror of the ambulance, shattering it. He grabbed a piece and used it to look around the corner. He could see the man comprehend what Stabler had said, looking down at the girl in his arms; silent tears were falling down her cheeks. In a split second, the man had shoved the gun down his pants and was running full-speed down the street with the girl.

Goren flew to his feet and grabbed his gun. Despite his tremendous size, he easily outpaced Elliot and pursued the two. Not willing to risk the girl's life, Goren holstered his gun and used his arms to give himself more speed. The girl, in her weakened state, was unable to keep up with her captor; the two split up, and Goren went for the girl. He caught her on a turn and wrapped his large arms around her.

"Let me go please! Please!" the girl pleaded, trying futilely to free herself.

"It's okay, it's alright, calm down Shelley…" Goren said, keeping her locked into his arms. Suddenly she stopped struggling, dropping her head back against his chest and staring, backward, up at him.

"More people are going to die for this. It'll be my fault, and yours for stopping me." She said. But a second later, she had collapsed, unconscious from the blood loss. Goren picked her up, she was so small in his arms, and carried her lifeless form quickly back to the E.R. and a gurney.

"I lost him." Stabler said, walking up behind him and breathing heavily. "What'd she say?"

"She said, it was her fault, and that more people were going to die because I didn't let her go. I guess we'll see."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Detective Goren stood staring through the back side of the mirror of the empty interrogation room at the SVU precinct building. Shelley had just been released from the hospital into the protective custody of the NYPD, but she was no better for it. Though it frustrated the hell out of him, Goren had not yet been able to speak to the girl; and the voice that had caused that particular delay suddenly erupted from the hall behind him.

"Absolutely not! Not without the child's legal guardian present! Protective custody means you get to protect her, not badger her into telling you what you want to hear!" Goren turned around and edged out of the partially open door, (in whatever way someone as large as himself could 'edge'), next to Detective Stabler, who was trying to calm the woman from Children's Services to no avail.

"Ma'am, we don't even know this girl's last name, let alone who her legal guardian is. She's a material witness to two murders and the victim of an assault-"

"You're gonna be the victims of a lawsuit if you question her without them!" She interrupted her.

"Then You allow us to question her as her acting guardian." Goren put forth.

"What?" the woman asked, becoming aware of his presence.

"The hospital admitted her as a minor over twenty-four hours ago, and no one has come to claim her. Since we have her in protective custody, we can sign her over to DCS and you can observe from the other side of the mirror. If you think it's too much, then you can tell us to stop." The woman considered this for a moment, then gave him a silent nod.

"It'll take forever to do the paperwork before we start, but those _are_ the rules. Okay, but the minute I say stop, we stop."

"Absolutely." Stabler gave Goren an oddly awed look.

"He's memorized the rule-book." Eames said with a smile.

"Which one?" Eames just laughed.

"Probably all of them, I don't think we'll ever know."

"What are you looking for?" Stabler asked sometime later. The Child Services woman had been right when she said the paperwork would take 'forever'. The pair had gone back to the 16th street house to search for more clues while she did so, and Goren was scratching paint off the wall of an upstairs bedroom in the flat.

"We already found one secret staircase in this place, maybe we'll get lucky twice." He said, bringing the paint close to his nose and taking a whiff. The room was large, with twelve-foot ceilings, a brick fireplace and great bay windows with bench seats. Detective Stabler walked over to sit on one of these seats. He reached out to wipe the dust off, but Goren grabbed his hand.

"What?"

"Look at this." He pointed at the dust near the edge of the seat. "Somebody nailed this shut. Call one of the CSI kids, we could have fingerprints here."

"Hey guys! Get up here, we've got prints!" Stabler yelled through the open doorway.

"Where are they?" The two investigators asked, excited.

"Right…there. We're gonna need a hammer." Stabler said; another CSI brought him one. They had the prints and several pictures in a matter of minutes and Goren began to tear out the nails one-by-one.

"It looks like this was done in a hurry, half of these nails aren't even hammered through all the way." With one final grunt, Goren lifted the seat. In the well of the window-seat, there was a large pile of objects including-

"Our smoking gun, this whip is covered in blood, looks like our murder weapon!" Stabler said, dropping it into an evidence bag.

"We've got more chains here, a pillow, we should check that for hair, and…" Goren stopped.

"What is it?"

"They're fuzzy handcuffs." Goren said, handing them to Stabler. "And this binder, it's full of names, first and last with seven-digit numbers, letters, maybe acronyms, another set of first names and two digit numbers after those with colored dots next to them. Like this one, it says 'Peter Willis, 7004589, AN, Kyle, 14'. There's got to be 100 names-." Goren stopped suddenly, handing the binder off to Elliot and reaching in for the last piece of evidence in the bottom of the seat.

"Do you still have the picture of the victims?" Goren asked.

"Yeah it's right here. Why?"

"Because I found the other half."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Goren observed the young, obviously malnourished, beautiful girl sitting directly across the metal table. Between them sat a brown cardboard box, full of the objects Stabler and he had pulled from the window seat. They had run the two sets of prints that they had found through the criminal manifests, not finding a match; now this girl was the only person who could help put the pieces together. As he thought this, Goren became aware that as he studied the girl, she was scrutinizing him just as intently.

"So, Shelley. Do you remember what happened to your back?" She hesitated for a moment, glancing sideways at the mirror; one of her many lines of stitches was visible coming out of the neck of her shirt. She reached up to touch it, turned back to Goren, and nodded.

"With this?" He set the bloodstained whip on the table. She didn't even flinch at the sight of it, barely glancing for more than a second, but he received another nod in reply. Goren then pulled the first half of the picture, containing the mother and her son, out of his pocket and slid it across the table. This provoked the reaction he was looking for.

"Where did you get this?" She said, delicately picking up the photograph.

"Do you know who these people are?"

"It's Mary and her son Tyler." She threw the picture back on the table and slid her chair backward, away from the table. "And you don't need to tell me where you got it, I already know they're dead."

"We know it was you that called the police. You ran into me right after you made the call. You told us where we could find the bodies…now they can have a proper burial. You did a good thing Shelley." The girl just stood up from her chair and stared out the bar-covered window.

"I wish you would stop calling me that. It's not my real name."

"What is your real name?" Goren asked, rising and standing behind her. She turned around and sized him up (and up, and up) again.

"Sarah." Sarah walked around him and sat back in her chair. He joined her, sitting on the edge of the table.

"Okay Sarah. Do you want to tell me what happened in that basement?"

"I can't." She said, fervently shaking her head. "If I tell you anything, what happened to Mary and Tyler is gonna happen again to someone else, and that's _if_ it hasn't already happened." Goren sighed and returned to the cardboard box. He pulled out the binder and dropped it on the table, making a loud noise, and opened it to the second page of names.

"What do these notations mean?" He asked, flipping through the pages. Sarah shook her head again and pushed it away.

"I can't tell you, two people are already dead because of me!"

"If you tell me who did this, I can stop that from happening again."

"It'll be my fault if more people get hurt."

"I know you were in that room Sarah!" Goren had raised his voice slightly, "Your blood is on the floor. And yes, if you don't tell me what I need to know and more people do die, it will be your fault-." He lowered his voice to almost a whisper at the look on her face, "because you didn't tell the one person who could help those other people, the ones you left behind." Goren stood up and pulled the other half of the picture out of his pocket, sliding it slowly across the table. This part of the picture showed another, younger boy, thirteen at most, sitting with his arm around a girl who was quite obviously his identical twin sister: a younger version of Sarah.

"Daniel…" She said, picking up the picture and holding it close to her chest. Goren walked over and kneeled beside her, one arm on the back of her chair and the other on her hands closed over the picture.

"We can still save your brother Sarah. But you have to tell me what happened and who did this. Can you do that for him?" Tears were falling from her eyes, but Sarah took another look at the photograph and nodded slowly, but surely.

"Okay." She said.

"Okay. Let's talk about the room in the basement." Goren said, pulling his chair around. He made a signal at the mirrored glass and Detective Stabler introduced himself and joined them at the table. Sarah pulled herself closer to the table, looking right at them.

"It was my first time ever in that room, but I heard the others talk about how awful it was."

"And your back?" Goren asked.

"One of the guests did that."

"Guests? What was this place used for?" Stabler asked. Sarah picked up the fuzzy handcuffs and tossed them to Stabler.

"You couldn't guess from these?"

"It's a…"

"You can say it. It's supposed to be a 'House of Earthly Pleasures', but it's just a high-class whorehouse." Stabler and Goren gave each other dark looks. "I guess that makes me one of the whores."

"Hey, that's not true Sarah." Stabler said.

"What happened to you is _not_ your fault, is that clear?" Goren asked. She didn't respond. "Now, how did you end up in a place like that?"

"Mom said our dad split when he found out my mom was pregnant. We lived in an apartment until we were eight, then my mom died from some disease. No one came looking for us, so we lived in the park near our apartment. It was working out okay until somebody reported us to social services. After that, we had to move to another part of the city, that's when we met Mrs. Blue."

"Mrs. Blue?" Stabler asked, "Is she the one that owns the flat on 16th?"

"Yeah, but I don't think that's her real name."

"Okay, so you met this woman how?" Goren prodded.

"We couldn't get work in the other part of the city, we were starving. Mrs. Blue caught us sleeping on a school playground and said we could come stay with her if we'd earn our keep. I know it was stupid, we should have known better…"

"Sarah, you were ten years old, you couldn't possibly have known what was going to happen, let alone what to do about it." Goren said. "What happened at the house?"

"It was a different house then, this was the third house we had lived in. But she made us do things, have sex… Daniel was a favorite for little league coaches and other freaks." Goren swallowed in disgust.

"And you?" Sarah's eyes turned hollow.

"Mostly young rich guys, a couple of women. Daniel wanted to leave, so did I of course. The front door wasn't locked or anything, we could have just walked out any time we wanted to."

"Why didn't you?" Stabler asked, trying to hide his hatred for this Mrs. Blue and failing miserably.

"It was her little game, like holding a steak in a dog's face but keeping it just out of reach. There were almost 20 of us and she would keep three or four locked in the basement. She said she would kill two for every one of us that left the house, I wasn't the first to prove that." Sarah shuddered at the thought and had to take a break.

"It's okay, it wasn't your fault." Stabler reiterated.

"She killed four people that I know about, Tyler and Mary included."

"So what happened three days ago, when you made the 9-1-1 call?"

"That room you found in the basement, it was usually just for people with…those tastes, but one of her regular clients… one of _my_ regular clients," She spit the terrible words out, "wanted to fulfill one of his little fantasies with me. The night before Mary and Tyler…" Tears began to well in her eyes, and she began to sob through her words. "He would beat me and then rape me, and beat me again. I couldn't take the pain, I begged him stop, but it just made him enjoy it more." Sarah could no longer form words; she clapped a hand over her mouth and just barely made it to the trash can before throwing up.

"Okay, she says that's enough for now." Munch had just come into the room; he helped Sarah to her feet and took her to lie down on the second story of the precinct. Goren and Stabler didn't move. Eames and Captain Cragen had followed Munch in, but they too remained silent. Stabler teetered on the edge of his chair for a second and then put a hand over his own mouth, dashing from the room.

"Holy God." The Captain said at last. Goren rubbed his eyes; the look on his face spelled true hatred to its extreme as he looked up at him.

"Where was God for her?"

"That's the first time I've thrown up from a case in four years." Stabler said, spitting into the sink. He and Goren were standing alone in the bathroom ten minutes later, unable to look each other in the eye.

"Says…ready to talk again." Munch had ducked his head in again for a split second; apparently he was incapable of normal speech patterns as well. Back in the interrogation room, Goren couldn't bring himself to open his mouth. Stabler was afflicted by the same condition, so they sat there in silence for several minutes.

"I guess you'll want to know about what happened next…" Goren looked her in the eyes for a moment, then nodded.

"When…" Sarah cleared her throat several times. "When he was done with me, someone carried me upstairs. I was in so much pain I can't remember much, all I knew was that I wanted to get out of there. I woke up at about noon the next day. Mrs. Blue had some bad news; her client wanted me again in the basement that night. Daniel, he wouldn't have it. He told me he didn't care if he was one of the people that died, but that I had to get out of there. He walked me to the door at 1:00, I hid in the neighbor's back yard, I was waiting for Daniel. But I had bled pretty badly and I fell asleep again. I woke up when Daniel came to tell me that Mrs. Blue had killed two people when she found out I was gone, he didn't know who. He told me to call 9-1-1 at the payphone up the street, and that he'd be okay as soon as the cops showed up to help us. But Mrs. Blue had sent her partner Frank out to look for me."

"Frank, was that the guy at the hospital?" Stabler asked. Sarah nodded.

"He was the one I was running from when I ran into you." She said, looking pointedly at Goren. "At the hospital, he told me my brother was next if I didn't go with him. I'm sorry I got you shot at."

"You didn't pull the trigger." He replied.

"I tried to wait for the cops on 15th street, but I knew they weren't going to show until Mrs. Blue could empty the house and get everyone into the next house."

"Why do you say that?" Stabler asked. Sarah laughed aloud.

"Half of Mrs. Blue's clients are cops or judges or government people! She probably blackmailed them into being late."

"And that's what this is for…" Goren said, reopening the binder. Sarah nodded.

"Like this one, Matt Harlbecker, then his phone number, 'Jack', who he paid for, how old Jack is, and the red dot at the end means this guy is a judge. She uses it to blackmail her clients into doing things she wants. Now what about my brother?"

"Okay…okay." Goren said, rising to his feet and pacing. "You don't know where the next house is?"

"No."

"This Mrs. Blue is calculating." Goren said through his hand. "She only left the evidence she wanted us to find. The whip, because she couldn't be caught with it, the cuffs-to make us think it was just a sex party gone wrong. The binder especially; she thinks we'll be so busy tracking down the people in it that she would be safe and no one would be looking for her. But she didn't count on not having you, Sarah. So we are going to be looking for her." Goren grabbed the binder and flipped the page. "Blue dots mean 'cop' right?" Sarah nodded.

"Yeah." Goren smiled slightly.

"I think it's time to do some blackmailing of our own."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"Lift your pant leg." Goren did, trying not to wrinkle his suit. They were in the back of an undercover police van with one Peter Willis, a uniform police officer they had found in the binder. The D.A. cut him a deal for his cooperation in introducing Detective Goren to Mrs. Blue. The plan was to make the introduction, hand over the cash, and find out where the new house was so it could be raided, and its prisoners freed. Across the street was a white-tie party for some law firm where Mrs. Blue had agreed to meet Goren and Willis.

"You're sure this is gonna work?" Goren asked as one of the SWAT team members tightened a tracking device around his leg. He only laughed.

"This is the most powerful tracking modules in existence, we got them from the military, and they use them to track terrorists all over the world. So I'd say it's a fair chance we'll be able to tell where you're headed sir." Goren smiled, pulling his pant leg down over the device.

"Now, this is a miniature camera, open your shirt please." He did. And the SWAT guy tore off his second button, replacing it with its disguised identical. "We see and hear what you do. The camera will be recording the whole time for evidence. And the transmitter sits in the front pocket of your bullet-proof vest, right…here."

"Here's the deal Goren, you go to the house, get some pictures, and get out, I don't want the SWAT guys shooting you by mistake." Captain Cragen said after they had stepped out of the van, "And you," he addressed Willis coldly. "You just introduce him and get out. I don't want you getting shot before you do your time."

"That's her over there, blue dress, talking to the guy in the white tux. We have to wait for her to come to us." Willis pointed out, "It's how she does business." Goren studied the woman, Mrs. Blue, maybe fifty years old, with cold gray hair and a tight smile. She turned her head for a moment and caught sight of Willis, and his friend. After leaning in to whisper something to the lawyer in the white tuxedo, she excused herself and made her way slowly across the room, stopping to greet someone or make sure the drinks were kept full; the perfect hostess. Goren watched with glee as she ordered the waiters around without a second thought, knowing that this was the woman, his catch.

"Peter darling, I'm so glad to see you!" she gave him a tiny handshake. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?" Willis smiled, playing his part perfectly, but not for nothing; his deal was sweetened every time he did something right.

"Mrs. Blue, this is an old friend of mine, he just transferred here from Chicago PD. This is Detective Robert Goren. I thought I'd show him a good time for his birthday." Mrs. Blue gave him the same handshake she had afforded Willis.

"Please, call me Bobby. Mrs. Blue…" Goren said, bending low to kiss her hand, though it quite disgusted him to do so. She giggled slightly as he bent back upward.

"You are a giant of a man Detective, I mean that in all good taste. I wonder if your mouth is so large?" Mrs. Blue looked to Willis for the answer.

"He's one of us." Goren didn't want to know who 'us' was, though he figured it meant he could be trusted. He just kept smiling down at Mrs. Blue; she hesitated, but eventually smiled back.

"Well then, any friend of Peter's is a customer of mine. Follow me."

"Not tonight Mrs. Blue, sorry. My wife's anniversary tonight too. Bobby here's the one who reminded me. Friday?" Mrs. Blue nodded, apparently unperturbed. Goren followed Mrs. Blue outside to a limousine, where she offered him a drink.

"Scotch on the rocks." Goren said. She poured him a glass, but he only toyed with it in his hand.

"So, Detective, what brings you to New York?" Mrs. Blue asked, sipping a glass of expensive sherry.

"A transfer. I actually just wanted to be in the heat of it all, New York is number one for…insurance fraud." He smiled mischievously. Mrs. Blue laughed heartily.

"Insurance Fraud! Now they must have someone like you working on something much more high profile than that…" The small talk continued for several minutes, but then the limousine pulled over on a street lined with expensive homes. Goren walked up to the house, Mrs. Blue in the lead, careful to aim his camera button at the address.

"Now Detective…Bobby." Mrs. Blue had opened a black binder on the thin glass table in the front hall of what looked like an otherwise normal home. "Could you fill this little card out for me. Goren eyeballed the card in mock suspicion, but leaned over to fill in his name and the same information he had found in the first notebook, excluding the name and age of the child he was about to pay for with forged bills.

"Done." Mrs. Blue slipped the card into the binder and led Goren through a door into a dining room, where several other patrons sat clinking wine glasses together, some of them with beautiful women sitting beside them. This was the real party, not that white-tie formal back at the law firm. Goren sat down on a couch next to Mrs. Blue and leaned back comfortably.

"Well, Happy Birthday Bobby. Now, tell me, what's your pleasure? Boy, girl? Younger? Or just a good time with some pretty thing?" Goren turned his eyes this way and that.

"I was thinking a boy, maybe 15, 16, but I want… to relieve my stress. I'd already get that on the job if I worked some other cases, you know, get to throw a few punches." He punched the air slightly. Mrs. Blue looked as if her dreams had come true and she told Goren to wait.

"Bobby, this is Kyle. Let me show you somewhere you can get to know each other and relieve some of that stress." It was all Goren could do not to pull his gun and shoot Mrs. Blue. Daniel was older than in the picture, but the boy she had called "Kyle" was in fact Daniel, and he was still the male mirror image of his sister. He didn't look afraid, if anything, he was defiant, looking up at Goren with hateful eyes. Mrs. Blue led them to a small door that opened into a tight stairwell. Seconds later, Goren was alone in a room identical to the one with his homicide victims, but this one was not yet covered with blood. Daniel refused to look at him, staring avidly at the floor. Goren opened his mouth, but he couldn't form the words. He couldn't tell this kid, this boy that his troubles were over, his sister was safe, and soon everything would be okay.

"Look, can we just get this over with?" Daniel said, whirling around toward Goren and staring him down. This sparked him back to having a pulse. He drew his gun.

"I'm a police officer Daniel. I'm not here to…" he couldn't bring himself to say it.

"How do you know my real name!" He asked, edging toward Goren.

"Sarah told me." Daniel's eyes brightened, making him look more alive in his malnourished, pale body. "She's just fine Daniel, she told us everything, the SWAT-" But Goren stopped when the door behind him opened and the end of a pistol jutted through. Frank held the end of this gun, the same one he had used to shoot at Goren at the hospital. He was about to shoot when two shots hit him in the chest and back; one from Goren's own weapon, and another from the rifle of the SWAT team member, who pushed the door open, leading Goren, with Daniel at his side, to freedom.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"What's taking so long?" Sarah asked back at the precinct. She was sitting in a room with Detectives Stabler and Munch. It was the latter who answered her question.

"They have to do everything just right Sarah, to make sure no one gets hurt when they-" But his words were in vain, for the next moment, Goren opened the door.

"Sarah!" Daniel flew in the door, wearing a SWAT team jacket, and threw his arms around his sister. Goren's face erupted with a smile fit for his size. Stabler's eyes welled up slightly, and Munch laughed aloud.

"Sarah? Daniel?" Goren said quietly. The two looked up at him. "There's someone else here who wants to see you." Munch walked out the door and when he returned, a tall, handsome man wearing an expensive suit was with him.

"Oh my God…" The man said. He dropped his suitcase and clapped his hand over his mouth.

"This is Jack Turner. We used your mother's name to track him down. He lives on Manhattan Island. He's your father." Jack Turner was crying silently, tears running down his face as he looked down at his children for the first time. Daniel was the first to speak after a long silence.

"Where have you been?" More tears fell from his eyes as his son spoke these words.

"Eve, Evelline, your mom sh-she never told me…" He choked on his words. "She never told me about you after we divorced." Sarah and Daniel looked at each other, and Goren from that day on was convinced that they could speak to each other without talking. Sarah moved forward and hesitantly placed her arms around Jack Turner, Daniel wasn't far behind as they hugged their father for the first time.

"Mrs. Blue, real name Jemima Uric, Trial Part 36"

"Will the defendant please rise? Members of the jury how do you find?"

"On thirty seven counts of illegal prostitution, we find the defendant guilty. On 6 counts of kidnapping in the first degree, we find the defendant guilty. On thirteen counts of criminal facilitation of rape, we find the defendant guilty. On four counts of murder in the first degree, we find the defendant guilty."


End file.
